3 sentenced for killing woman on South Side

Three men once considered suspects in a serial killing spree pleaded guilty Thursday to a 1998 slaying--the one killing in which they were actually charged.

Robert Jarrett, 29, and Michael Mallet, 26, were sentenced to 20 years in prison, and Eugene Rivers, 33, was sentenced to 23 years for the murder of LaCreesha Avery, 27. All three men have already served nearly 5 years in prison since their arrest in September 1999.

Cook County Criminal Court Judge Michael Toomin in Skokie sentenced Chicagoans Mallet and Rivers and Jarrett of Glen Ellyn, said Tom Stanton, a spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office.

Avery, 27, whose partially naked body was found in the 100 block of East 45th Street on March 18, 1998, was for a time considered a victim in a spree of killings and sexual assaults involving at least a dozen women on the South Side between 1993 and 1999.

Police thought DNA evidence might link Avery's murder to the killing of Juanita Butler, 27, whose body was found in May 1998. By September 1999, police had no DNA evidence that the three men were involved in that case. The men were also eliminated as suspects in any of the four "pattern killings" of drug addicts and prostitutes.

Avery was killed just after midnight, shortly after Jarrett, Mallet and Rivers left a party at Jarrett's apartment near where her body was found. As the three men loitered outside the building, one of them saw Avery, accused her of owing him money and demanded it from her, Stanton said.

The men grabbed Avery and dragged her to a nearby vacant building, where "they beat her with their fists and a two-by-four before raping her," Stanton said.

The three men then strangled Avery with a belt, Stanton said. Jarrett then got a sheet from his apartment, and the three men wrapped Avery's body before throwing her out the window of the building.

Attorneys for the defendants could not be reached for comment Thursday.